The landscape of boxing is similar to a volcanic unsettled mountain range. Every decade or so, a volcano erupts and the whole boxing landscape changes and when the dust settles there are always winners and losers.
We talked about having the best boxers fight each other and we talk about the boxing bouts but when you break it all down really the most important thing is the promoters, hopefully taking good care of the athletes and at the same time looking for the greater good of the sport by not building walls and creating Road blocks. I mean just recently because of the promoters decisions, HBO the biggest powerhouse in boxing had to close its doors, there are so many layers and so many obstacles a broadcasting network is going to go through before just simply give up.
Back in the day, growing up, Don King and Don King promotions were the kings of promoting boxing, and even though there were many disputes about Don Kings stable of boxers getting paid he was involved literally in every major boxing broadcast.
Then a volcano eruption happened and the boxing landscape changed. And then again another Volcano blew when Golden boy promotions was created.
Last year one of the biggest boxing volcano’s of all time erupted. And now as the dust is starting to settle and lava harden, we are starting to see a glimpse of what the future of boxing is.
Al Haymon and his Premier Boxing Champions are in partnership with Mayweather promotions and have settled in nicely at Showtime and various networks that broadcast PBC.
Bob Arum’s Top Rank Boxing moved his business from HBO and signed a Huge deal with ESPN. Having some big fights on ESPN not only garners a bigger audience but also helps promote the ESPN App. (Apps are basically the future of sports)
The New Kid of the scene ( not really new, but very powerful now) has benefited the most from this galactic volcano eruption.
Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing (sports) has positioned himself to dominate the future of boxing (until the next volcano).
He has a very large stable of boxers, and he’s just starting. Imagine the New York Yankees having currently no payroll, they would basically be able to go and buy every single free agent on the market today. That’s what Eddie Hearn with the blessing of DAZN is currently doing.
Lastly, Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions. These guys had some huge internal problems years ago when Golden Boy promotions President did some dirty inside jobs that set the company back 10 years. Oscar started running it again and is doing very well. He focuses on getting a lot of the Hispanic boxers to join his promotion. Canelo Alvarez is his crown jewel and has really carried the promotion for a while now, that is often very normal for promotions. With HBO closing shop Oscar has to find a new home for his boxers.
The Broadcasting:
Showtime: With HBO closing shop, Showtime Championship Boxing is looking to increase its footprint.
ESPN: ESPN got huge ratings from the Crawford fight last week and will be broadcasting boxing for a while. The actual presentation and broadcasting fill-in Time is very second rate. The good news is they do have a ton of great analysts that they can tap. It gets a little old when Joe Tessitore tries to blow up every fight and every punch like it’s the best of all time. Tessitore has to realize the audience is happy watching the fight and he doesn’t need to make it what it’s not.
BeIN Sports: good place to watch boxing but really not that big in the United States.
One Championship: based in Singapore One Championship has taken the Asian market by storm and is a powerhouse in Broadcasting.
DAZN:
So that leaves us with DAZN out of London, England. All of Eddie Hearns boxers basically fight on DAZN. And now with so many free agents on the market ( with HBO closing) it seems that Canelo and Golden Boy will take there business to DAZN. Manny Pacquiao is going to the Al Haymon group and GGG is still weighting his options.
With DAZN cornering the market, it seems that diehard boxing fans will have no choice but to subscribe to the app.
Hopefully all these promoters committing to certain broadcasting networks don’t keep building larger walls to get the best fights done.
What do you thing?
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